VoxelMatters today released a comprehensive report on the state of additive manufacturing in the aerospace industry.
The report focuses on the aerospace industry’s use of additive manufacturing, which has been of great interest in the past decade. That segment was one of the first to adopt the technology at a large scale for production parts, once technologies and materials reached a sufficient level of development. This has led to a series of radically new aerospace products.
Because of the explosive growth of AM in this industry, many 3D printer manufacturers and materials providers have shifted focus. Many new products are targeted at aerospace.
But how big is this market? How big could it get? That’s the focus of the new report from VoxelMatters. Their analysts obtained data from a variety of sources, including from private companies, to develop their findings.
VoxelMatters has provided Fabbaloo with a peek at some of the key findings in the report, which we can examine here.
At top the chart shows the state of revenues for this sector in 2022 and 2023. Clearly there has been significant growth, with total revenues for metal activities (in grey) growing over 30% and a total nearing US$1B in 2023. Polymer (in blue) also grew, but not quite as much. The thin third column represents ceramic 3D printing, which while lower than the other two, shows very significant growth.
In this chart, we see that VoxelMatters predicts this growth to continue in their ten-year forecast. By 2033, the analyst firm predicts a market of around US$15B for metal and US$10B for polymer revenues. The ceramic revenue is still relatively low at that point, but much larger than today.
Note there is one unusual category on this chart, “Adopters”, which is not usually seen in this type of industry report. VoxelMatters developed a unique method to estimate this category, and it represents the value of the 3D printed parts produced by organizations that are not sold, but instead used internally. These would include not only prototypes, but also jigs & fixtures, spare parts, and other internal uses. It’s clearly a major driver of 3D print activity.
In this chart we can get an idea of which specific applications are leading the growth. While the usage is mostly evenly spread over these categories, it seems that aviation (civil and military) have the largest use. The two other major applications are UAVs and Space, both civil and military.
The ability of 3D print technology to produce strong, lightweight and complex parts is ideal for each of these industries. It’s unsurprising that these applications are all set to grow substantially in the next few years.
What does all of this mean? It means that if true, then the manufacturers of materials and technology, and providers of services for this market should prepare for rapid expansion. If this is the demand from companies, then someone is going to provide it. Smart companies will plan accordingly and be in the right place to receive orders over coming years.
The report is available in full detail — with over 200 charts and a full dataset — from VoxelMatters now.
Via VoxelMatters
